An alloxan-diabetic rabbit model was established for the testing of the function of discordant xenogeneic pig islets isolated and purified from adult pig pancreata. The functional state of the pig islet transplants and immunological state of the rabbit recipients were assessed. Intraportal transplantation of 0.47 +/- 0.01 ml of pig islets with estimated 57418 +/- 5020 in number containing an estimated insulin content of 33.93 +/- 2.97 units (n = 7; mean +/- SEM) resulted in the normalization of blood glucose with a corresponding rise in insulin levels in the diabetic rabbit recipients for 2 days. An intravenous glucose tolerance test performed in 4 recipients during the normoglycemic period resulted in an improved K rate (2.5 +/- 0.4) over the diabetic controls, but this was significantly lower than the normal control animals (K rate = 4.5 +/- 0.4; n = 8). In vitro studies demonstrated that the preformed antibodies detected in the rabbit recipients were cytotoxic to the pig islet cells and lymphocytes. Heat treatment at 56 degrees C and mercaptoethanol treatment markedly reduced the cytotoxic activities of the sera. These findings implicated involvement of complement and IgM class antibodies in the killing of the pig islet cells. Furthermore, pig islet transplants at the kidney capsule site were coated with IgM class antibodies. This study has demonstrated that pig islets can be successfully isolated and purified in sufficient numbers for xenotransplantation studies in alloxan-diabetic rabbit. The porcine islet-to-alloxan diabetic rabbit combination can serve as a highly stringent and useful discordant model for assessing the effectiveness of various immunomodulation and immunosuppressive regimens. The finding of an optimal approach to immunorejection would potentially be applicable to actual clinical islet xenotransplantation in diabetic patients.